Local authorities have ordered evacuations in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in areas below mountains and hillsides that were burned in the recent Thomas fire, as the winter’s first major rainstorm approaches California.

Downtown Santa Barbara, normally a vibrant holiday destination, is virtually empty as residents have evacuated the area ahead of the advancing Thomas fire, which continues to spread west, though firefighters are making progress.

The California Department of Water Resources issued a sudden evacuation order shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday for residents near the Oroville Dam in northern California, warning that the dam’s emergency spillway would fail in the next 60 minutes.

Convoys of evacuees travelled from a rebel-held area of Aleppo and two Shiite villages besieged by insurgents on Monday, a war monitor and rebels said, as a deal enabling evacuations held after a tense, days-long stand-off and before a UN vote.

275 structures have been destroyed or damaged in the 45,388 acre Erskine wildfire that continued sweeping through California’s Central Valley on Monday — while some evacuations were lifted for some of the area’s residents.

Two more southern California fires sprung up on Monday, burning over 5,000 acres in the San Gabriel Mountains by Tuesday morning and raising the total number of firefighters battling the state’s six active wildfires to over 4,700.